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we find land, we can cut you enough cordwood to get you to China! But right now we are on the
ocean! We are not on a river! And trying to assemble the riverboats down in those waves is suicide
for any man who goes down there, and murder for you to order them to do it!"
"Lord Conrad's notes clearly say that the Amazon River is so wide that in some places you cannot
see the banks from the middle! And you tasted the last bucket of water we brought up from the side!
There wasn't one bit of salt in it! It was river water! We are on a river, you bloody idiot!"
"I don't give a damn if it tastes like pure white lightning! The Baltic Sea is damn low on salt, and
nobody saw you putting a riverboat on it! Those waves down there are two yards high, and any
attempt to assemble a riverboat over the side will result in disaster! And even if we were on a river, it
makes no sense to take a fragile, short-ranged riverboat who knows how damned far to land when
you still have miles of water below your ship's keel! If this is a river, it is too big for the boats we
brought, and the only thing to do is take the ship up it until it gets shallow enough and narrow enough
to justify putting a small riverboat on it!" Captain Odon shouted.
"This ship is needed elsewhere, and we have a schedule to keep! Now get your cowardly ass in
gear and do your job!"
"That's an illegal order and you damn well know it! Schedules? Now the filthy truth finally comes out!
You are willing to kill a whole company of men just so you can make your paperwork look neat! My
men are not going to get butchered just to satisfy your stupid brand of pigheadedness!"
"Captain, if you won't follow orders, then your men will! Get on with your job, because if you don't,
this ship is turning back!" the baron said.
"You will do no such thing. You will not kill my men, and you will not abort this mission. It is too
important to Lord Conrad for us to turn back now, when there isn't any good reason for it. The
reason why you will not do anything stupid is that I have three times as many men as you do, and my
men are much better armed! Now just continue steaming in the direction that we're going, and we'll
find land eventually!"
And with that Captain Odon turned around and marched back to his cabin. The baron stood there,
breathing hard, and then suddenly realized that there were two dozen men staring at him. He opened
his mouth to shout something, and then thought better of it. He turned and strutted briskly back to his
own cabin.
"With any luck, they'll both get drunk alone in their cabins, and the rest of us can do something
sensible and save the mission," First Officer Seweryn Goszczynski said.
"That is a noble thought," Zbigniew said. "Does anybody have any idea what set them off?"
"It was a matter of the baron making a poorly thought-out suggestion certainly, it wasn't an order
at first and your captain rather abruptly calling it stupid. You must understand that the baron has
been around boats and ships for forty years now, and he was not pleased that a man less than half his
age was made co-komander on this mission," a ship's radio operator said.
I said that the whole idea of having co-komanders was stupid, but since we were stuck with it, we
junior officers ought to come up with a plan as to what to do if our superiors got into this same
argument again, especially if they started giving the men strange and contradictory orders.
The first officer said, "If that happens, we must be prepared to disobey all illegal orders, which
would mean turning this ship back for home, aborting the mission, and enduring our own courts-
martial. Those of us that weren't hung would have our careers irretrievably damaged. If we didn't
disobey them, and anybody got killed, as your captain is convinced would happen, we'd be up on
charges anyway, for conveying an illegal order. We are all in an absolutely no-win situation, and that
is probably what will save us. Both of our superiors have been acting like bloody idiots, but neither
one of them is a stupid bloody idiot. They know what would happen as well. as we do, and they both
know that their best chance of getting out of this unscathed is to pretend that it didn't happen. I doubt
if either of them will stick his head out of his cabin until we are ready to part company. For the time
being, we will follow my standing orders and continue to sail west, until such time as we can find a
sane place in which to assemble your riverboats."
"An excellent suggestion, sir, and one that the Explorer's Corps will endorse. We will also station
as high-ranking a man as possible near our captain's door, to waylay him if he comes out to do
something stupid. I suggest that your people perform the same service for the baron," Zbigniew said.
"You may count on it, sir. I further suggest that if our superiors wisely decide to pretend that all of
this never happened, we would all be well-advised to contract a case of mass amnesia."
I said that he could count on that.
Chapter Twenty- Six
From the Journal of Josip Sobieski
WRITTEN MARCH 7,1251, CONCERNING JANUARY 21, 1250
THINGS WENT pretty much as First Officer Goszczynski said they would. Our superiors both
declared themselves to be sick, and had their meals sent to their rooms. Slowly, the tension on board
relaxed.
It was two days before we sighted land to starboard, and another day more until we had land to port.
A further half day took us upriver to a point where we were no longer bothered by big ocean waves.
A council of officers decided we were at a position that both of our superiors could live with, had
they been sufficiently well to attend the meeting. We were on the equator, and we were definitely on
an absolutely huge river. The current was strong, the water was fresh, and we had banks on both side
of us.
We dropped anchor, broke out the the premade floats that would be the bottoms of the riverboats,
and started lowering them down to the water level. We soon had assembly crews working under the
wings on both sides of the ship.
The floats were the same size as our standard containers so they could fit into the ship's storage
conveyors. Each float had a removable top, and most of them already contained the cargo that the
riverboats would be carrying. They bolted together easily.
The steam engines were another matter, since they were heavy, and had to be mounted mostly
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